The National Museum of Roller Skating and the Rotary Jail Museum

The National Museum of Roller Skating In the year of our Lord 1720, the English inventor John Joseph Merlin arrived at a fancy British masquerade ball sporting his newest sartorial invention: a fancy pair of roller skates.  Having neglected to also invent brakes for his roller skates, Merlin forthwith crashed into a giant, expensive chandelier and was summarily ushered from the party.  Since that inauspicious commencement, many, many people have crashed while wearing roller skates, though generally not with implications for the nearby chandeliers.  But many more have proceeded to quickly learn the art of propelling themselves forward on four wheels and mastered the skill of rollerskating, thereby entering into a world of fitness, fun, romance, speed, and daring-do.  Roller-skating is making a huge comeback now from its last resurgence in the 1970s, as have in-line skating, roller hockey, heely’s, and that most elbow-wielding of all speedy sports: roller derby.  In the first half-hour of today’s Special Collections, we talk with the director of the National Museum of Rollerskating about all things rollerskating. Museum website: www.rollerskatingmuseum.com Rotary Jail Museum In Crawfordsville, Indiana, there is a kind of museum which you cannot see anywhere else in the world: a museum dedicated to the rotary jail, a building which turned with a crank in order to lock in the prisoners it held.  Once it was rotated properly, the rotary jail was absolutely escape-proof because each prisoner was enclosed in a cell with, believe it or not, not a single door!  The Crawfordsville rotary jail held the local drunkards and miscreants for an astounding 130 years and the director of the jail museum is here to tell us all about this most durable, quirky, inescapable, kinda fun to think about now jail. Museum website: www.rotaryjailmuseum.org